


anything.

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: i look at you and there's no speech left in me [8]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pining, hello i love my queer children, hello im back on my bullshit, hello im giving willie his agency back, in which i am once again comparing characters to greek mythology, in which we get willie away from caleb, in which willie is megara, ish, it doesnt really come up but luke is always trans in my fics, trans!luke, willie! is! blackfoot!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: When he was still small enough to fit his flitting heart on the tip of his tongue and in his mother’s lap, she’d braid his ever growing hair with fingers soft enough to tilt all the world towards her. “My darling”, she’d say, “my sweet, sweet boy.” He’d lean back against her, and she’d kiss his forehead, and his hands, unmarked still. “There’s a whole world for you in the lines of your palms.” She traced them, with careful fingertips, each division, each dip. “You just have to touch it.” His braid was heavy on his shoulders, then, and his mother’s touch was new.
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie, Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Background Alex/Luke Patterson/Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Series: i look at you and there's no speech left in me [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015690
Comments: 34
Kudos: 119





	anything.

“You know”, says Hades, with his teeth needle-sharp, with the world around him drab and dead and cold, clinging to him as if somehow, he could keep them from their fates, “you really did an amazing job there.” He reaches for Megara, and her life cold and dead and doomed in his hands, her heart a motionless; sick thing. His skin is blue and his world knows nothing of spring evenings spent sprawled out underneath a blooming apple tree. Megara lies, crushed and small and grey, at the feet of all that loves her.

Alex is panicking. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knows that he is panicking, that the ache in his lungs and his burning cheeks and the frantic rhythm of his foot against the floor mean that he’s spiralling further and further into himself until he sits inside his own ribcage, gasping for air or maybe just a breath or maybe just their music against his skin. On screen, Hercules dives into a green pool of all that sticks to him, all that his lineage will never let him be. Julie throws popcorn against the TV, and Reggie sits, his mouth slack, perched at the edge of the sofa. Luke has his head propped up on his hands and Alex –

Alex thinks of Willie.

Willie, with his soul stamped deeper than theirs ever was, Willie with his hands on Alex’ palms, on the slow beat of his pulse, Willie and those soft eyes. Willie, with Caleb’s hands on his shoulders and his music in his bones the way Alex can still feel it, pulling at the edges of him until it feels like he might rip at the seams. Alex thinks of Willie, and the way his hands feel, uncalloused and soft, something like the aftermath of a summer storm after the sun has finally come out, something like an ache sitting somewhere in Alex’ stomach whenever Willie smiles at him, his hair unbound, his hands on him.

Here’s the thing about Willie:

He took his helmet off and immediately, Alex was lost. He smiled, and reached for him with those soft, warm hands, and with that tilted smile, with that laugh somewhere deep in his throat, and immediately, Alex lost his rhythm. Somewhere between Willie’s hair and his voice and the necklace around his throat, Alex couldn’t find a simple beat anymore. Instead, there was only the cadence of Willie’s voice and the tangle of his legs with his own.

And his laughter.

Megara smiles at Hercules until her cheeks ache. She wrings her hair at him and her life in her hands until he plucks a flower from a tree and the world from its foundations. Hercules gives up all that he has for her and Megara dies.

In this story, Hercules doesn’t give up his life. In this story, he doesn’t go after Megara. In this story, Megara has been dead for decades and worlds to come. In this story, Hades does not offer Megara’s freedom.

In this story, Alex is panicking at the sight of Hades’ razor-teeth and the way there’s no longer a stamp hot on his wrist. Hercules ages, and withers into something like dust pressed into shape, something like Alex’ splintering bones and his trembling hands in Willie’s. Something like a crop top, tie dyed – something like Caleb’s voice and Alex’ drums; tongue tied.

Willie takes him to empty museums to scream at the echoes of things that once sneered at them – at Alex’ pink or Willie’s hair, at their rings and their necklaces and the kisses hidden in the corners of their mouths. He takes him in his hands, untrembling, and kisses the rhythm of his drums clean off of his mouth, as if it was nothing but sugar dusted atop him. Maybe Willie is just this: smiling and laughing and screaming; loud in a way Alex had never dared to be, spun about him like candy floss; sweetened. Willie takes him whole, and Alex’ beat stutters.

Hercules pulls Megara out of a pool of dread, dripping green and sick onto stone and into Hercules’ arms. Julie cheers, and Luke kisses Reggie’s neck, a blushing, flushed thing pressed into the creases of this sofa, and Alex is panicking. Somewhere, in a club in Hollywood, Caleb makes Willie dance on strings for a skateboard and the pavements he does not leave a trace on.

On screen, Hercules freezes with his fist in Hades’ face. Alex chokes on something that might be a sob or maybe his own panic crawling up from his windpipe. Maybe it’s just the wet sound of his own tears gathering at the corners of his mouth. Maybe it’s the feeling of that stamp on his wrist or the ache of Willie’s laughter in the hollow of his guts. Maybe – Reggie puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Alex”, he says, something soft strung between the two of you, “Alex, what’s wrong?”

Alex takes a breath and Reggie’s shirt in his hands, swallows the panic back down into his lungs where it drips, slow and sluggish onto his diaphragm. He shakes his head. Luke settles his forehead against Alex’, a slow exhale to each of Alex’ inhales, something warm and solid all but melted into his skin. “Alex”, he says, like a song.

Alex leans into them.

* * *

Willie’s palm aches. His hands ache and his legs ache and his bones _ache_. Caleb takes him by the strings he has tied around his wrists, and strings him up around Alex’ neck, like something from a fairy tale calling for a man to reach out and touch it – to step through a mirror, a painting or a glass tinted window. Caleb, with his teeth sharp enough to drip blood from Willie’s wrists, smiles at Alex and the soft pink wrapped about him, Alex and his hair and the tap of his fingers, Alex with that flittering smile and his voice stuck somewhere in his throat. Through the glass, his smile doesn’t tremble. Through the glass, Willie can’t hear his voice at all.

“You know”, says Caleb, with his voice as soft and smooth as it is pressed onto vinyl and hidden in drawers, “I really do wonder sometimes, if you’re ever going to follow up on that promise of yours.”

 _Anything_ , Willie had said, something desperate and foolish and blood stained, with his skateboard splintered on the concrete beside him. _Anything_ , he had said, with Caleb’s hand stretched towards him, with his lips stretched across his teeth.

_What will you give to stay?_

_Anything._

So Willie gave the skin on his palms and the smile on his lips, and Alex’ smile to Caleb and his mouth, too big for even the world to fit inside of it. He gives his world and his words and the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen, fogged by glass tinted windows. Caleb smiles, something wide stretching beyond the confines of his lips.

Willie gives anything to skate.

When he was still small enough to fit his flitting heart on the tip of his tongue and in his mother’s lap, she’d braid his ever growing hair with fingers soft enough to tilt all the world towards her. “My darling”, she’d say, “my sweet, sweet boy.” He’d lean back against her, and she’d kiss his forehead, and his hands, unmarked still. “There’s a whole world for you in the lines of your palms.” She traced them, with careful fingertips, each division, each dip. “You just have to touch it.” His braid was heavy on his shoulders, then, and his mother’s touch was new.

He was still alive, then, and had not yet promised his life to a man with a smile like needles stuck in Willie’s flesh. He could still reach his mother then, and her soft voice, could tell her of every boy cradled in the palms of his hands and stuck to his lips and the nape of his neck. She’d kiss his cheeks, and braid his hair, and keep him so close that he almost forgot that the world doesn’t smell of the forest just after a rainstorm.

Alex smiles, as if someone might carve the smile off his lips and thrust it back into his chest. His hands tremble, rhythmic and soft against the palms of Willie’s hands. One-and-two. Exhale-inhale-pause. There’s always a beat to Alex and his pink jumpers, always an order to his steps and his hands on Willie’s shirt. Willie’s bones ache. Alex smiles, with his soft lips and his cheeks flushed and his hair mussed, and Willie wants nothing but to reach for him. He doesn’t.

Instead, he grabs him by the hand and drags him into a museum. Alex laughs, and the stamp on Willie’s wrist burns against his skin. He pulls at him, and Alex tilts his head. “What does he want with you?”

Willie reaches for the door. “What?”

“Caleb. What does he want with you?”

_What will you give to stay?_

_Anything._ Alex’ drums, his bands’ lives, the world on a platter, his mother with her hands in his hair, for a life and the sky stretched above him, still.

He shrugs.

Alex frowns. “You must have promised him something. For the stamp, I mean.”

Willie shrugs.

 _Play at my club_ , Caleb had said, with that same smile, and Alex had promised, smiling, smiling – flushed. Caleb stamped them and they did, with their mouth curled around something sour or rotten or maybe just shattered at the bases of their spines. Until they didn’t. Until Alex started flickering, until his band mates followed in a breath.

Caleb spent the next hours pacing in his office. Willie spent the next hours tucked into a corner of Hollywood, staring at the lines of his palms, stretching from his stamp to the tips of his fingers.

_What will you give to stay?_

He will give the world. He will give his life and the words caught in his throat and the crack in his skull. He will not give his mother and her soft hands or the pretty boy with the smile tucked into the sides of Willie’s mouth. He will not give anything for the pavements of Hollywood.

“How did you get rid of it?” Willie doesn’t push the door open. Instead, he pulls Alex through it with a smile and a wiggle of his eyebrows. “I mean, it can’t have just been you guys poofing out.”

Alex shrugs. “Julie hugged us”, he says. “She was desperate, and she hugged us, and then they just -”, he waves a hand. One-two. Breath. “-vanished.”

 _My love_ , says Willie’s mother into his hair, _you have the whole world charted into your hands._ Willie takes a breath. It’s a trembling thing, stuck to the walls of his windpipe, and he leans into Alex’ space. “She sounds great”, he says.

Alex wraps his hands around the nape of his neck. “Yeah. She’s a good kid.”

Willie’s skin is stretched taut across his bones, and there’s something sitting at the edge of Alex’ fingers. He laughs. It doesn’t quite sound like a laugh.

“I wanna try something”, Alex says, then, with his lips almost pressed against Willie’s.

There’s something fluttering in Willie’s chest that might be his heart or that might be something like panic clawing its way up from his stomach. “Like what, man?”

Alex licks his lips, and Willie can almost feel it against his own. “Could I kiss you?”

 _Oh_. “Weird opener, but sure.” It’s his heart. Definitely his heart. Alex takes a breath, and moves closer, until his lips lie soft and sweet against his own, and Willie _sighs_. There’s something dislodged from his throat and trembling against Alex’ lips, and his wrist aches.

He can’t quite tell, after, how long they spent like that, with Alex’ hands on his neck, and Willie’s fingers curled into the fabric of his jumper, with the ache of Willie’s stamp crumbling into the pink of Alex’ soft kiss, in the silent echo of this empty museums, with things long dead on the walls. They don’t need to breathe and they don’t need to move and they don’t need to stop. Willie’s head is swimming with it all when Alex stops kissing him, with soft hands and soft lips and a beat against his skin.

“It’s love”, he says softly.

“Huh.”

Alex laughs. “Love. Julie loves us, and we love her. I-”, he stops, and takes a breath. “It’s love that gets rid of the stamp. Caleb is a goddamn cliché.”

Willie blinks at him. “So someone who loves me had to hug me, or kiss me, or, you know, whatever?”

Alex hums, and Willie clicks his tongue. “That’s just rude. No one can even see me, man.”

Alex giggles, no longer obstructed by tinted glass or oil paint. He’s stepped through the barrier and into this story for Willie, with outstretched hands and his chin pushed forwards. And he is pretty, spun pink, in Willie’s arms, and so incredibly soft.

* * *

In this story, Hercules doesn’t wait until the world crashes. In this story, Megara doesn’t suffocate with the dead. In this story, Hercules and Megara stand, giggling and unmarked in a silent museum, holding onto one another. One-and-two. Breathe.


End file.
